Lely Horizonvs
AgriWebb
AgriWebb: If you want herd records without tying software to one manufacturer's hardware
Lely Horizon
Dairy herd management software billed per lactating cow that only runs a Lely robot barn
As of 1 September 2026, Lely Horizon's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. The management layer for Lely robotic milking, feeding and barn equipment. Softwr lists it under Agriculture. Lely Horizon is made by Lely International N.V., available on Web, iOS, Android, Windows.
Overview
What Lely Horizon does
Lely Horizon is the farm management system for Lely's robotic dairy equipment: Astronaut milking robots, Vector feeding, Discovery manure robots and Calm calf feeders. It collects over a hundred data points from every milking, builds per-cow health, fertility and production profiles, and drives the day-to-day work list a robot barn generates. It replaced the older T4C system, and migration off T4C was mandatory rather than optional. The fact that changes a purchase decision is the billing model. Horizon is a subscription in tiers (Basic, Control and Advance) invoiced digitally on the number of lactating cows milked by the Astronaut robots. This is not a one-off software licence bundled into a capital purchase; it is an operating cost that rises as the herd grows and continues for as long as the robots run. Farms modelling a robot investment on the hardware price alone routinely miss it, and over a ten-year robot life the software line is material. Buyers are dairy farms that have already committed to Lely automation, typically 60 to 300 cows in Europe, North America and Oceania, bought through a local Lely Center rather than direct. The trade-off is total dependence. Horizon does not manage a conventional parlour, does not meaningfully manage another manufacturer's robots, and the barn will not run properly without it, so the subscription is not a discretionary line you can cut in a bad milk-price year.
What people use it for
- A 180-cow dairy running four Astronaut robots that needs the attention list to replace walking the barn twice a day
- A farm adding Vector automatic feeding that wants ration delivery driven by the same cow data as milking
- A dairy manager tracking transition cow health across two sites from one account
- A Lely advisor benchmarking a client's robot utilisation against comparable farms before recommending a fourth box
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The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Lely Horizon.
- Billing is per lactating cow, so the software cost grows with the herd indefinitely and a farm that expands from 120 to 200 cows takes a permanent software cost increase it did not budget when it bought the robots.
- Horizon is not optional: the barn equipment depends on it, so the subscription cannot be cancelled in a difficult year the way a discretionary analytics tool can, which removes any negotiating position at renewal.
- It manages Lely equipment and effectively nothing else, so a farm running a Lely robot alongside a conventional parlour or another manufacturer's feeder ends up with two systems and no combined cow record.
- The migration from the older T4C system was compulsory and rebuilt the interface and reporting, and farms that had years of T4C reports and custom lists found the equivalents either missing or shaped differently, costing retraining time.
- Everything is bought and supported through the local Lely Center, so pricing, response time and the quality of advice vary by dealer with no published rate card, and a farm with a weak local centre has no practical alternative supplier.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Lely Horizon
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- Lely HorizonvsFarmbrite
Farmbrite: Simpler and cheaper for conventional herds that do not need robot integration
- Lely HorizonvsConnecterra
Connecterra: Adds analytics across a herd without requiring a specific milking system
Pricing
What Lely Horizon costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Horizon Basic
On request
- Core robot operation and monitoring
- Per lactating cow subscription
- Invoiced digitally by the local Lely Center
Horizon Control
On request
- Adds herd management and fertility tooling
- Per lactating cow subscription
Horizon Advance
On request
- Adds analysis, benchmarking and advisor tooling
- Per lactating cow subscription
Capabilities
Features
Per-cow milking data
Over 100 data points captured at every robot visit, including yield, conductivity, colour and rumination
Health and fertility alerts
Deviation-based attention lists for mastitis, ketosis risk and heat detection
Work list generation
Turns alerts into the day's tasks with completion tracking per staff member
Feed management
Drives Vector automatic feeding rations and monitors feed table availability
Farm Management Support
Lely advisor access to the same data for benchmarking and consulting
Multi-site view
One account across several barns or sites for larger operations
Mobile alerts
Push notifications for robot faults and cow attentions
Reporting and benchmarking
Production and efficiency comparison against anonymised peer farms
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
How is Lely Horizon priced?
As a subscription per lactating cow milked by the Astronaut robots, in Basic, Control and Advance tiers. Lely does not publish rates; the local Lely Center quotes them.
Can I run Horizon without Lely robots?
No. It is the control and management layer for Lely equipment and has no meaningful function without it.
What happened to T4C?
Horizon replaced it. Migration was required rather than optional, and reporting was rebuilt rather than ported.
Does the subscription end when the robot is paid off?
No. It continues for as long as the robots are milking, which is the cost most robot business cases understate.
Keep looking
Where to go from Lely Horizon
- Lely Horizon alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Lely Horizon pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Lely Horizon badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Agriculture softwareThe full category
- Best Agriculture softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Agriculture software for
Compare Lely Horizon with
- Connecterra
- Allflex Livestock Intelligence
- AgriWebb
- Farmbrite
- GEA DairyNet
- DairyComp
- Halter
- Nedap Livestock Management
- CattleMax
- Herdwatch
- Netafim NetBeat
- Datamars Livestock
- Baseline Irrigation
- Galcon
- Taranis
- Trimble Ag Software
- GEA DairyNet
- Halter
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Lely Horizon, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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